Tech Tutor Mark

It has been a long time coming, but users of Prezi finally have reason to rejoice.  The popular online presentation tool was missing one important piece in its feature set...namely, sound.  Users could not insert any type of audio into a presentation unless it came directly within a movie clip.  This ruled out WAVs, MP3s and any other type of specific audio clips unless they were converted into a movie file.  I personally found this to be a big inconvenience, so I actually stopped using it altogether last year.  Now, word is out that Prezi has added audio to its interface.  In fact, you can add audio to a specific path point or as background for your entire presentation.  Here is a quick tutorial on how to do this .  How to add and remove audio from specific path points (quite important) is included. These newly-added audio features just might make Prezi worth re-visiting, especially for those of us like me who had a...

The Giveaway of the Day  has become one of my daily visited sites.  It gives you a one-day-only free link to download some of the best pay desktop software around.  Anywhere from DVD-copying sofware to data recovery tools to video editors and antivirus utilities.  You get one day to download, install and register each program, and I haven't found a bad one in the bunch.  I wanted to add a floating ticker to my blog, but haven't found room yet, so I thought I would just promote it this one day only .  Keep visiting this post though to see the real-time updated ticker above with the remaining time on the current free offer.  Giveaway of the Day is good stuff!

Tony Vincent is an Apple devices training guru who has his own site at learninginhand.com.   I discovered this short tutorial about locking students into one single app, which is a nice new accessibility feature of iOS 6.  Check out this tutorial here , which introduces us to Guided Access .  To launch Guided Access, do the following: Tap on the Settings . Go to General and choose Accessibility . Turn Guided Access On. Set a passcode. Launch the app you want to lock the device into. Triple-click the Home button. You can choose to disable touch or motion, in addition to disabling the Home and volume buttons. Tap the Start button.

Interactive Websites Collection by Stacy Biscorner, Instructional Coach, Port Huron Area School District, Port Huron, MI.

I subscribe to the daily MicroNugget from CBT Nuggets.  Much of their training is for the true IT geek, but this one is particularly useful for anyone who has bought a new computer with Windows 8 .  It seems so foreign if you're using a mouse and keyboard.  Thanks go out to Don Jones for creating such a helpful tutorial that is just loaded with keyboard tips in a mere five minutes.

Jill Duffy writes some excellent articles for PCMag and this week she wrote a particularly relevant article that fit right in with the presentation I gave on "Tech Tools to Organize Your Life."  Her article is called "Get Organized: How to Take Control of Your Personal Finances."   The whole process of doing a spending log and how that helps you create a budget, and then using such great online resources as Mint.com to link to all of your accounts is so helpful.  It's all about being organized, and it's not too late to grab hold of all of it with the use of technology to guide you.  I'd be curious to know which of these tools has helped you and what your go-to apps are for managing your finances. 

On February 6th, I presented " Tech Tools to Organize Your Life " for the Computer Operators of Marysville (C.O.M.P.) in downtown Port Huron.  It had been a while since I'd seen this group.  The last time I presented for them, I was doing Tips & Tricks for Windows 7 .   Their web site is www.bwcomp.org if you want to check out this computer user group, now celebrating its 30th year in existence. This is an embedded Microsoft Office presentation, powered by Office Web Apps .

I just couldn't resist posting this.  It's a nice piece of history - even before Siskel & Ebert were on PBS.  Siskel had a moustache and the opening credits were much different.  Since this is one of my all-time favorite films, I thought it might be nice to look back.  Guess which one liked "Taxi Driver" and which one didn't.

It seems that almost everyone affiliated with educational technology (EdTech) is jumping on the iPad bandwagon and compiling a list of the Best iPad Apps for Education.  Why should I be any different?  Here I am offering a collection of lists that have been compiled from PCMag, as well as my pretty thorough online searches for the best of the best.  These resources are the best I've found so far, but they are not strictly EdTech iPad apps.  There is plenty here for everyone.  Please feel free to offer your own insight and personal lists that might help others out. Mark's PHASD iPad Training Notes The Best of the Best iPad Resources (my collected list of resources) Appitic Appolicious Apps in Education TeachWithYouriPad   Apps List The 100 Best iPad Apps (according to PCMag.com) Top 200 Best iPad Apps 2012 (according to TechRadar.com) Education Apps for iPad (Apple) iPad Academy Kathy Schrock's iPads in the Classroom Kit Har...

I keep running up against this problem in my everyday travels. With more and more people creating online forms, there becomes a need to both fill and edit these forms. Adobe Acrobat Professional is the industry standard, but there are other, cheaper alternatives. Tech & Learning included a post with some great resources on how to do this on the desktop as well as a tablet.